


Natural Born Star

by jessequicksters



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Friendship, Gen, M/M, NAME THOSE GIRLS CAMPAIGN 2019, Original Character(s), Reminiscing, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-18
Updated: 2019-01-18
Packaged: 2019-10-12 05:51:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17461820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessequicksters/pseuds/jessequicksters
Summary: Steve had lived four times: before the war, on the road with the USO showgirls, with the Howling Commandos and now with the Avengers. And while the war was well-documented and the Avengers were, well, ongoing—nobody ever asks him about those girls. Nobody remembers them.





	Natural Born Star

To say that Steve’s introduction to the war was unconventional would be, at the very least, a massive understatement. People forget—they remember, because they laugh at the footage and the tapes get played during gag hours—but they forget, that Steve was a showman before he was soldier.

He’s on the Internet one night while Tony is away, stumbling across another one of those memes of him punching Hitler in the face, for the ninety-eighth time. Wisconsin. He remembers this one clearly. Most nights went the same, but this one was different. 

He remembers Nancy, sweet girl on the front row of the chorus, who was always the last one to take position in line backstage because she was always messing with the curlers in her hair. He remembers that that night, they waited for her until the very last minute and she still didn’t show.

“Nancy! Where the hell is Nancy?” the director barked at the group, as Steve heard the applause dying down from the other side of the curtains. He growled, pushing several of the girls tighter into the line, “Rogers! Take position now. We can’t be messing around, we are trying to win a war!”

Steve scurried on stage, but not before overhearing one of the girls mentioning Nancy and the word ‘baby’ in the same sentence. Oh.

After they wrapped up the show, Steve knocked on Nancy’s trailer. She shared it with five other girls, all of whom were just taking off their shoes on the floor and peeling off their gloves when one of them opened the door. It was Barbara, who was always smoking inside when the girls were telling her not to.

“Is Nancy okay? They’re still looking for her,” Steve said, and Barbara cocked her head towards the girl bundled up at the top bunk, clutching the sheets with one hand and a letter in the other as she tried wiping away her tears with her arm. It was a sight Steve saw far too often on the road.

“Oh, Steve,” she said, broken and barely a whisper. “He’s gone… Nelson’s gone. I got the phone call today, just when I was about to—I was going to tell him about the baby.” 

That night was the night Steve helped a pregnant girl run away from the tour on a motorbike they stole from an officer. He remembers the air cold and sharp in his lungs, chest beating with a mad rush of adrenaline and hope. He used up his phone call for the week to contact her family in Chicago to tell them to pick her up at the state border. Her contract wouldn’t let her go without being fined, and she needed every penny she had. Steve took her to a diner, which they reached by two in the morning. He stayed with her and they ordered pancakes while they waited for her family. 

“I think you’ll be a great mom,” Steve said, keeping an eye out for any seedy men who might be coming into the diner at the early hour. Thankfully, it was a quiet night, and the two of them could talk in peace.

Nancy grinned proud and wide, letting her chin sink into her hand as her frizzy hair fell into the pool of maple syrup on her plate. She jumped up as Steve laughed, carefully sliding the plate to the side.

“I know I will,” she replied, “just like I know you’ll be a good soldier someday.”

He made it back to camp just before sunrise and as the tour moved along, Steve was still nowhere closer to a battlefield.

Now, sitting on his desk, the autoplay feature takes him through more memories, more clips and more places: Minnesota was a good one. Well, it didn’t start out that way. It started out with Patty and Barbs getting into the biggest argument Steve had ever witnessed to this day. He doesn’t like remembering the details, but they said some horrible things to each other that they most certainly regretted. He knows, because he’s done the same with Tony.

“Well, why don’t you go talk to her?” Steve said to Patty, who he’d found walking around town all by herself. “It’s our one day off this month. I’d hate to see you two miss an opportunity to get out and do something nice.”

“I am out and I am doing something nice,” Patty said, pointing at the ice cream in her hand. She looked up at Steve, curious, “Besides, ain’t Barbs in a church or something—thought you’d be there too, darlin’.”

“Well, God doesn’t need a shoulder to cry on this morning.”

“Do you see any tears? Sweetie, my heart is made of steel. Juice me up with whatever they gave you in that lab, and it won’t get any stronger.”

“Maybe she needs it to be softer.”

Patty looked down, then. A school marching band started coming down the road from the distance as a crowd started to gather around the pavements. She looked back at Steve and the harsh lines on her face slowly disappeared. She licked her ice cream some more until the top of her cone was flat. Behind them, the music was getting louder and the clash of cymbals and the beating of drums were taking away every gap of silence in the air. 

“I hate her family,” Patty yelled, taking Steve by surprise. She continued, “I hate her church. I hate the town she grew up in. I hate this war, this—this whole damn show.”

A pause, and then, “But I love her more than anyone could know. And I know she loves me, but god, is the world trying to make us feel anything but love for each other.”

Steve held her, before people started to stare, hugging her like a wounded bird in his arms. Patty was one of the first girls he met when he started on the tour. She showed him where things were, introduced him to the rest, never treated him like a piece of meat or a clueless soldier to drag along for the ride. Hell, she even gave him lessons on vocal projection before their first performance and helped him get comfortable on stage.

It was hard, what they all went through. Sure, they may have not enlisted for the army, but all of them were playing a role backstage in a war that was happening on the other side of the curtain. He knew what it felt like to be helpless in a world where you can never be enough, to be powerless and yet still wanting to offer everything you had.

He remembers the nights where they would play cards in crowded trailers, sneak in booze, or run off to go swimming in nearby lakes (they would invite him to go skinny dipping sometimes, but Steve would always politely decline or pretend to be asleep those nights). Caroline, who trained as an illusionist, would put on a show for them after hours. Beth, who had gone to art school and didn't talk much, would look over some of Steve's sketches as Steve looked over hers. She liked painting surrealist landscapes and visions of the future, some of which looked eerily like the Manhattan Steve knew today. 

He remembers Marie, the youngest of their group, who was seventeen when she joined and had the voice of a nightingale. She wanted to join her father’s band after the war, but her father didn’t survive and her mother died shortly after. Steve had tried to look her up after waking up from the ice, but all traces went cold.

He only spent less than a year with those girls, and yet, the memories don’t fade away as quickly as some earlier ones do. His time on the road and in the war the following year were vastly different, they felt like lifetimes apart. In a sense, Steve had lived four times: before the war, on the road, with the Howling Commandos and now with the Avengers. His life before the war was peppered with tragic family losses and a life of frustrating illness. And while the war was well documented and the Avengers were, well, ongoing—nobody ever asks him about those girls. Nobody remembers them.    

They were meant to celebrate Marie’s eighteenth birthday the night that Steve ran off with Howard and Peggy. It was… a mess, to begin with. A couple of officers had been trying to get the girls to come with them after the show and Steve, being Steve, shoved their faces in the mud. It hadn’t exactly been the best of shows either, after being heckled offstage with tomatoes. It was safe to say that the tour was starting to wear him thin.

He’d received a letter from Nancy telling him that the baby is due soon, a month, and that she was going to name him after Steve for saving their lives. Nelson Roger Williams. He grew up to be a History teacher in New York and died before Steve woke up in the ice in a car accident or something. It was always something.

When Steve joined the girls for dinner, they seemed a little tense because everyone had just found out about Steve’s little brawl outside.

“You’re gonna get in trouble,” Patty said, pushing her tray towards him as she scooted over.

“It’s not like they can fire me,” Steve said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing, I—where’s Marie?” Steve looked around the tent. “I wanted to wish her a happy birthday.”

“She’s in Anna’s trailer with the others. We’ve got some whiskey in tonight, the girl’s gonna love it,” Patty flashed a grin.

Steve nodded weakly. “I’ll catch up with you girls later, just finishing up a couple of sketches tonight.”

Of course, Peggy showed up in the rain that day with news of Bucky’s unit and the rest was history, as they would say.

 

-

 

Steve dreams of being there when they won the war. He dreams of the girls, celebrating with a performance at City Hall, parties on the streets, confetti and cheer, Bucky and Peggy next to him, a roaring round of applause when the lights go off after their performance. Most people think that Steve Rogers is a shy man with delicate sensibilities, but the fact of the matter is that he’s been acquainted with bright tights and high boots and lace that the girls used to make him try on during nights where everyone was too tired or too worn out from thinking about the world’s collective misery.

He wakes up to find Tony standing near the window as the sunlight settles in on the desk, the bed, and eventually on Steve’s face. Tony must’ve noticed him rustling in bed as he turns around, setting down his phone on the table to crawl on top of Steve.

“You’re still in your suit,” Steve says, trying to blink himself awake. He touches Tony’s hand; unsure of what he’s searching for, some tactile feeling of being here, perhaps. His brain still forgets sometimes, where he’s at, time-wise. And it takes little things to bring him back to reality, like the touch of a man who can only love him in the 21st century.

“I just got back,” Tony smiles. He looks tired, like he hasn’t had enough sleep; Steve can see it in the colour of his eyes and skin, but he puts on a brave face anyway for him. “Sorry if I woke you. It’s just, Reed’s time-travel device...”

“How’s it going?” He remembers now, why Tony went away for a whole week. It was a confidential project the two of them were working on, away from the prying eyes of S.H.I.E.L.D or the government.

“Good, good, yeah. It’s actually—progress is actually better than expected.”

“Meaning?”

Tony pauses, taking a breath as if there’s a secret they’re trying to keep from the room itself. He then seems to settle on an answer. “It works. Now. It’s in my lab. He thought it’d be safer with me, for the time being.”

Steve’s brain starts to fire up, conjuring up all sorts of possibilities. He lets his mind wander off to one possibility in particular and it suddenly becomes very difficult to let go, like catching air in your hands when the rest of the world is on fire. Would Tony even entertain the idea?

“Tony,” Steve says softly, treading carefully, “will you trust me if I asked for something I needed?”

 

-

 

Steve’s still surprised that Tony said yes. Even as Tony’s adjusting the harness on him in the machine—for stability, and to keep him intact—there’s still a wave of disbelief coursing through him. Tony looks at him in the eyes and brings a hand up to Steve’s cheek, gently stroking with his sore and worn-out fingers.

“You’re sure this isn’t going to uh, change the timeline right?” Steve says, throat dry. 

Tony’s lips quirk up slightly. “I thought you asked me to trust you, sweetheart. But, yes, you should be okay. They didn’t find out you were gone until the next morning, right? So, technically, you’ve got all night, even though the quicker you leave, the better.”

Steve nods slowly as Tony moves closer towards him, arms wrapped around his hips in a tight hug. He exhales as Tony kisses right below his jawline, lips pressed hard against his skin. “And Strange?”

“In another dimension, I checked with Wanda. You’re free to cross the borders of time, and you won’t be charged for the crime.” 

“Good. I mean, crime, bad, but—”

“Hey, baby, no harm, no foul. If you end up cutting it close, I’ll just jump in there and fish you back out.”

“Tony, you don’t have to—” He thinks about Tony entering his time, and how it would feel to look after someone you knew didn’t belong. It’s a thought that crosses his mind often, whenever he thinks about his place on the team, in the world, and with Tony.

“I have to, Steve, you’ve roped me into this now.” Tony drums his fingers all over his star-spangled suit. “All jokes aside, I know how much this means to you. And if I could help you get…” the word lingers on the tip of his tongue, “closure, for one thing in your life, then I’ll fire up this time-machine myself. Which I will be doing, now, if you’re still in.”

Steve kisses him, long and hard, one last time before taking position on the platform. “I’m in.”

 

-

 

In the dark of the night, the storm starts to pick up. Steve is currently on the way with Peggy to meet Howard at the airstrip, the best civilian pilot the war had ever known. Steve is also currently walking towards Marie’s trailer to say the goodbye that never happened the first time around. He’s thought about doing this before, going back in time for one last do-over, or a final goodbye, but almost every moment with everyone that mattered to him happened at a crucial, unchanging point in time. Changing anything to do with Bucky would’ve had massive repercussions for their current future, or even Peggy for that matter. Hard as it seems to accept, the past played out exactly the way it had to. No matter how many lives were lost, people hurt and countries devastated, any changes Steve made to his contribution to the war could potentially lead to worse fractures in time. 

Except for this one night. Being unaccounted for for several hours allows him to fill in this one gap in time, a pocket of bright opportunity. He stands in front of the trailer door, rain pouring down on him as he knocks on the hard metal. Marie opens it, whiskey in hand and wearing one too many ribbons in her hair and around her neck.

“Rogers! I thought you wouldn’t come,” she beams, and clearly the party’s already in full swing, with jive music blasting in the background, the girls dancing in the back, and the air thick with antique perfume and smoke. It shakes Steve, for a second, as his heart sinks, a strange feeling washing over him. Is it guilt? Or is it just the ripples of a man displaced from time once more?

All of these girls are alive, when in reality they’re…

“Captain Rogers? You okay? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost,” Marie says, voice sombre all of a sudden. Steve can’t explain it, but it feels like she’s looking straight through him.

“I told everyone you were shacking up with Ms. Carter tonight!” Patty yells from the back of the room, leaning on Barbs’ shoulder, as the taller woman gives her a playful nudge on the head. Patty blows a raspberry at her and Barbs slaps a hand over her mouth before she ends up fighting through it for a kiss.

Steve laughs, weakly. It’s strange, the feeling like nothing’s changed, while knowing fully well that life has moved on decades ahead. He wishes Tony was around, an anchor to connect his past and his present, but they both knew that this was something Steve had to do alone.

Although, alone wouldn’t be the word he’d use for tonight. He wishes Marie a happy birthday, as Caroline pulls him in to be a volunteer for their next magic trick. Patty and Barbs are dancing in the corner and waxing drunken poetics at each other, while the rest of the girls are singing the chorus to a song Steve’s forgotten in the time spent away from this time and place. He’s certain he knew it too, once upon a time, and yet he can’t bring himself to sing along. As the words he thought he remembered get stuck in the back of his throat, the melody he thought he knew start taking unexpected twists and turns, evading every grasp of familiarity he thought he had. _Oh, America, look how old you’ve grown._

He’s only got hours, Steve tells himself. Only a few hours to make this last, and if it means letting himself go and pushing away every bit of doubt in his mind, then so be it. He’ll say his goodbyes, dance with the dames that brought him a sliver of light in these dark times, and tell them to keep their chin up and hold on for a little bit longer, because they are going to win this war. He can’t tell them that directly, of course, as much as he wishes he could, so he settles with vague sentiments and morale boosters. 

A couple of the girls take a cigarette break outside after a while and Steve joins them to get some fresh air.

“Hey, Steve?” Patty says, leaning against the door of the trailer outside, squinting at him. “You look a little different since the last time I saw ya, which was—oh, did you do something with your hair? You know, Barbs trained as a hairstylist, she’d’ve fixed you up real nice.”

“I guess I just wanted to try something new,” Steve smiles, trying to catch her eyes in the dark of the night.

Her scratchy voice comes back, coughing through the waft of smoke. “You are full of surprises, darlin’. We’re all doing the same show, playing the same role, doing the same ol’ song and dance every night, and yet I still never know what you’re gonna get up to come next morning.”

“I just try to be wherever I need to be, really.”

She nods, slowly. Her mouth stretches into a full grin as she laughs, “Well, then, you sure as hell shouldn’t be here, soldier.”

 


End file.
